


To Do What's Necessary

by vials



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-15 00:07:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21244250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vials/pseuds/vials
Summary: Harry Hart has seen the reality of executions from all sides, but regardless of whether he's facing down such a fate himself or dealing it out to another, the questions remain the same.





	To Do What's Necessary

**Author's Note:**

> (From the backlog of fic -- 2017 batch.)

What was the difference between killing somebody, and executing them? It was a question that Harry hadn’t seen himself putting much thought into, but he was a man who liked to think and eventually he supposed he would settle on anything if he had long enough. At first he had thought the difference was in the intent; when someone was executed they knew they were, at root, being punished for something. But wasn’t it that same in other circumstances? If someone shot at him and he killed them first, wasn’t that in itself a kind of punishment? An execution, of sorts?

“I suppose it’s more official,” Merlin had said, after a long pause. Harry hadn’t known why he had asked him; just that the question had suddenly risen up like a lump in his throat and he’d had to ask, if only to validate the conclusion he had already come to himself. “There’s a kind of trial and conviction process to it, it’s sanctioned, it’s more premeditated.”

He had listened intently to Harry’s rebuttal about how a self-defence killing was also in itself a kind of punishment.

“Aye, but it’s a sudden thing,” he had said then, leaning back in his seat and drumming his fingers against the arm of his seat. “You react first, and then you ask the questions and find the justifications. An execution is thought about beforehand. You go away, you think about it, and most likely you along with several others come to the conclusion that yes, this person definitely deserves to die. You look back on the evidence and you conclude that the person has forfeited their right to life.”

_Forfeited their right to life._

The words had stuck in his head and showed themselves at semi-regular intervals, never at the forefront but always something to remember. The first time they surged forward, hit him with a strength that would have made him falter if he was still the kind of person who did such a thing, was on a stormy afternoon thousands of miles away from discussions about morality over a drink. Harry was exhausted, he was running on empty, the blood had frozen to his face and it was the hardest part of any mission – the home stretch, the waiting for backup to arrive, the moment where he had succeeded and he knew he had succeeded but he wasn’t done yet. There was still travelling, still debriefing, still recovering, all of it rearing up like an impossible obstacle when all he wanted to do was sleep. Perhaps he would have done while he waited for his ride out of there but the storm had delayed the helicopter and he was stuck alone in a cabin where he couldn’t sleep even if he wanted to; the man slumped on the floor in front of him was restrained but Harry couldn’t go to sleep and trust that he would remain that way. Such oversights could easily be deadly. 

They had spent an uneasy night together and as the sun had risen and the storm had cleared Harry remembered that the words had been swimming around in his mind all night and finally he allowed himself to wonder why, and an answer quickly came to him. It was because he was wondering what they were going to do with him.

“Been a nasty night, eh?” Merlin asked, his voice suddenly crystal clear through Harry’s earpiece, as though the disruption from the storm had never happened. “How’re you holding up?”

“Splendid,” Harry said gruffly, ignoring the aches in his limbs and the sleep trying to drag him down with it. “While you’re around, Merlin, you couldn’t get me connected to Arthur, could you? It’s rather urgent.”

A brief pause, and then Merlin put himself back on track, the curiosity in his voice mostly masked. “Shouldn’t be a problem. Give me a second.”

A second was all it took. Harry glanced at the restraints, gave the man another kick in the balls for insurance, and then moved through to the adjoining room, speaking in a murmur. He and Arthur discussed the situation. They discussed the circumstances behind how Harry had come to capture the man – he had been trying to kill him, of course, and Harry had needed somebody who knew what the hell was going on. They discussed what the man had done for them, and Arthur tactfully glossed over the fact that Harry had had to get answers out of him somehow. They discussed what he had seen and what he might have overheard which, unavoidably, was a lot. Finally they discussed what the best course of action was – to try and bring him back on the off chance he might have more useful information, or to take what Arthur referred to as “other measures”? 

It was agreed that the safest and most practical answer was to take those measures.

Harry had long since known that he was, somewhat hilariously, one of Kingsman’s wildcards. He hadn’t thought it of himself when he had first heard the term applied to him, but it had settled over him and gradually he had come to accept it, and then to even admit they were right. Harry had never thought it of himself; as far as he knew he had always toed the line, but he had learned that toeing the line could reap the same results if one toed it a little too enthusiastically. He took things to heart, he focused on the end goal, and yes, he would admit that he was the first to shoulder through any obstacles that might get between him and said goal. If that had lead to him having a reputation for being rather heavy-handed, so be it. One did what was necessary. If he found he could live with it easier than most after the deed was done, good for him. It was useful. Better that than to cut himself up over it.

So imagine his annoyance when the man’s incessant begging actually made him feel uneasy. It wasn’t as though Harry hadn’t heard people beg before; it was just the fact that they usually didn’t get much more out than the standard no please before they weren’t around to say anything anymore, and Harry could quite easily pretend that he hadn’t heard that. This time it was different. Harry had to drag the man up. He had to pull him, resisting all the way, over to the door. He had to keep hold of the squirming man with one hand while the other wrestled the heavy oak door open. Harry had no idea how the man had managed to pick up on what Harry was planning; perhaps there was something in his body language, Harry thought, the sort of executioner’s stride. Whatever it was, it lead the man to continue to resist as Harry pulled him outside and, for reasons unknown to himself, around the back of the cabin. If he listened carefully he could hear the steady thud of approaching helicopter blades, and somewhere in his mind he briefly considered biding his time, waiting to see if he could offload the deed onto somebody else. He barely allowed the thoughts to register. It was impossible, and not to mention unbecoming. He would do it himself, as he had promised, and really it was the kindest thing – making this man wait for the inevitable for the ten minutes it would take for the helicopter to land and backup to find him would be an impossible cruelty. 

Harry forced himself to look at the man, now hunched over on his knees at Harry’s feet, his face so close to the ground that his nose must be touching the snow. Harry wondered about the etiquette of such things. Did one ask for any final words? Make them kneel upright or stand? Make them face away? He didn’t know. He had never executed anyone before. He supposed, if it was him, he would want it to be quick.

Harry aimed the gun down where the man was still hunched over himself and fired a single shot into the back of his head. His sobbing immediately stopped; he went rigid and then limp, collapsing at Harry’s feet in a halo of red. Harry looked down at him for several moments, not knowing what it was he felt, and realised that he had never known the man’s name.

*****

It didn’t cross his mind at the time, but looking back at the first time Harry truly thought he was going to die, he would think it was karmic retribution for the incident at the cabin. It would have been many years ago by that point, and the thought wouldn’t come to him until the long months of recovery that followed his exposure as a mole deep in the heart of an organisation smuggling nuclear arms to very undesirable people (though, as Harry pointed out, who _was_ desirable when it came to getting their hands on such things?), but it all seemed to make too much sense in the immediate aftermath. Really, Harry thought he should have been shot. It would have made sense. It would have been a fair case of him getting what was his. At the time he of course wanted to live, though thankfully not to the extent that he found himself begging, but a part of him would forever feel guilty for surviving.

The gun had felt warm against the back of his head even though Harry knew that logically it should have cooled by now; he had been kneeling there for some time, not quite the hours it felt like but probably not minutes either. His knees ached and so did the rest of him, for varying reasons: his back from holding himself upright, everything else from the multiple kickings he had received. It was tempting to slump over and give the muscles in his back an even temporary rest, but perhaps somewhere in his subconscious he remembered the man with his face touching the snow and refused to let himself be anything other than rigid. His heart hammered in his chest and he could feel his pulse fluttering against his throat but by some miracle he managed to keep his face calm, a slight smile on bloodied lips, the knowledge that in a way he had won through sheer spite and silence enough to keep him from giving in totally to the fear that came from inevitable death. He wanted to beg. He could see how it happened. He knew better. 

Harry had truly believed he wasn’t going to act. For him, there seemed to be no point. He was in the middle of nowhere, the only thing around him fields and a car and the people that had brought him there, none of whom were overly sympathetic to his plight. They would shoot him and leave him out here and he’d probably not be found for weeks, and that would be that. If he did manage to avoid the first shot he was sure another would find him, so really it was for the best he just died quickly. He wouldn’t be the first Kingsman agent to die in the line of duty; really it was an accepted outcome, certainly more likely that retirement – and who wanted that, anyway? He told himself he would go to death calmly and, really, a little heroically, and certainly not crying and begging like the man he had executed, and that if he himself should _forfeit his right to life_ it would be with the understanding that those who dealt death out to others had to accept its possibility themselves. He was committed, as he would insist in his debriefing, to an honourable death, but then the gunman had moved from behind him to in front of him, pointing the gun between Harry’s eyes instead, and it was instinct from there. 

They asked him if he wanted to say any last words, he remembered later, but at the time Harry had been too focused on other things. They had tied his hands only loosely behind his back, in a way that most people mistakenly believed to be secure; pressing his arms against his sides and tensing his aching back and shoulder muscles gave Harry the tension to snap the plastic as he pulled his arms forward, and then it was a simple movement – bring both hands up, grab the gunman’s wrists, use them as leverage to pull himself up and kick the man’s legs out from under him. Once Harry had the gun, the outcome was inevitable. A minute later and he was adjusting the seat of the car and peering in the glovebox for anything that might stop the incessant bleeding from his nose. 

“So, what was almost dying like?” Merlin asked him, during one of his visits to see Harry in the middle of his long recovery. It hadn’t occurred to Harry until later that Merlin would have had a first-person perspective to the entire thing. 

“Rather underwhelming,” Harry replied, because at that point in time he hadn’t quite worked out just what it all meant, and even if he had, there were some thoughts you just kept to yourself. “I thought it would be much more dramatic, but really it was just like losing a game you knew was over far before that point. I was almost thankful it was over.”

“That doesn’t sound like you.”

“Well, they had put me through all manner of hell by then,” Harry said, managing a small smile. “Death was really not that big of a deal by that point.”

“Christ,” Merlin said, rubbing a hand over his mouth in the way he often did when he almost said something he thought better of. “Well, I’m glad it didn’t come to that. And for what it’s worth, that was a very badass finale.”

“You know I like to keep things entertaining,” Harry grinned, always teasing, always entertaining, always running that wildcard reputation and trying not to think too much about what it was like when he was alone, when he had time to think, when he finally accepted the whispers about karma that were beginning to circle around his head. “It’s all I’ll have to go on for the foreseeable future. I probably won’t be cleared for field duty for months, which is going to be fun. I’ll be annoying you more often than not.”

“I look forward to it,” Merlin said, returning the grin, and Harry allowed himself a moment of relief that he had gotten away with it, stubbornly ignoring the disappointment that Merlin hadn’t noticed his uncertainty, hadn’t noticed the fact that Harry would like nothing more than to hear he hadn’t deserved it. Such knowledge was assumed to be standard. Why would he feel that way? As far as anyone knew, Harry hadn’t thought about the man he had executed since the minute it had happened. 

But he did think about it. In the same way as it constantly came to him – _forfeited their right to life_ – so did the first example of that sentiment in action. If Harry had been capable of hindsight in the immediate aftermath of seeing Valentine level the gun at his head, he might have thought that was finally the karma he had been expecting.

*****

Eggsy was screaming at him.

Impossibly he was in another cabin in the snow and it was impossibly cold and he had just shot a man in the head. He had just shot a man in the head and Eggsy was screaming at him because Eggsy didn’t get it; Harry had never gotten the chance to give him the same speech that he thought was a necessity now, about doing what was necessary, about forfeiting rights to life, about all of that. He’d never got the chance and so he supposed Eggsy’s reaction was understandable; Harry would have explained his reasoning, if he’d had the words at the time. 

Later, much later, they were able to discuss it. Harry didn’t know how much later it was, because he tried not to keep track of things like that anymore. There was no sense placing anniversaries and commemorations on such things, and Harry was happy to let such specifics slip down the wayside. All he knew what that it had probably been a few years, and they were sitting in the study of the house Eggsy shared with Tilde, and snoozing in front of the fire were Hamish and JB2, now no longer puppies. 

“What made you shoot him?” Eggsy asked, out of the blue, and Harry had somehow known exactly what he was talking about.

“It was the logical thing to do,” he replied, finding himself doubling back, remembering the reasoning behind the first time he had done such a thing, realising they were identical, really. “It would have been too risky to try and apprehend him and bring him back for questioning. He likely wouldn’t have cooperated, or he would have put up a fight and complicated things. It could have also caused tension between people believing in his guilt and people believing in his innocence. People would have been distracted attempting to get to the bottom of it, and we had bigger problems.”

“So you decided to skip the trial, yeah?” Eggsy asked, in his usual matter-of-fact, almost teasing way. “Just go straight to the execution?”

Somehow it was the first time Harry had ever heard his actions be directly referred to as an execution. He swallowed the realisation down, finding it didn’t taste as bitter as he had expected it would.

“It’s never an enjoyable decision to make,” he answered, after a brief pause. “But I do believe that sometimes it’s necessary. You have to think of the bigger picture. You have to prioritise.”

“What if you’d been wrong?”

“I wasn’t.”

“Yeah, but if you _had_ been.”

“Then I would have had to face the consequences and live with them.”

Harry allowed Eggsy to think that being correct relieved him of any consequences, or of anything he had to live with. It was easier to let him think that, cruel though it was. There would come a day where Eggsy would find himself in a similar situation, Harry was sure of it – where he would have to take action, where he would have no other choice but to kill somebody who was no longer a threat but simply an inconvenience. Would it be better to warn him? Harry didn’t think so. That warning, that apprehension, could mean the split second between saving him a lot of trouble and getting him killed. It was best to let him work it out himself, as painful though it was. 

“Suppose you’re glad you were right then, eh?”

“It’s the best case scenario for a very undesirable situation.”

“Yeah, yeah. Well, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

Harry managed a small smile. “That much can be forgiven.”

For a moment Eggsy looked as though he wanted to pick up on the unspoken words, ask the inevitable question – _what can’t be?_ Maybe Harry would have told him, if he’d asked. 

He didn’t, and Harry was content with that, too.


End file.
